Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Washington’s Latest Incoherent Rant

Ellis Washington is a source of great amusement for me. Once a week he writes these completely incoherent screeds for the Worldnetdaily, dressing up his simpleminded hatred (and constant strawmanning) of liberals in pseudo-intellectual garb. His latest column is a textbook example as he rants against secular humanists. He begins by quoting this from humanist Corliss Lamont:

“There is no place in the Humanist worldview for either immortality or God in the valid meanings of those terms. Humanism contends that instead of the gods creating the cosmos, the cosmos, in the individualized form of human beings giving rein to their imagination, created the gods.”

And then says this:

It is intellectually impossible to understand the left and their perverse paradigm they have forced inside of every institution of American culture and society, law, politics and history, unless you view it through the lens of Hegelian dialectical materialism. For example, using the above quote the secular humanist (today’s Democrats) believes that God is a myth [thesis/problem] and that man created the gods [antithesis/reaction], therefore we [Democrats] are gods who can do whatever we please in the name of the common good – the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, the original intent of the framers, liberty, due process, morality be damned! [synthesis/solution]

This is standard-issue tribalism. He hates secular humanism and he hates Democrats, so they are just the same thing. The fact that less than 5% of Americans are secular humanists (in fact, I would bet that less than 5% of Americans could even define the term) while about 40% are Democrats might slow down a more reasonable person from casually equating the two, but Washington is not interested in such nuances. Every person he despises must be placed in the same tribe and they must all believe his strawman version of what they believe.

This malignant, narcissist worldview is evident in the person and political policies of President Barack Obama and the Democratic Socialist Party. The typical liberal, progressive or postmodernist scoffs at the metaphysical. They mock those people who follow a Judeo-Christian worldview as being myopic, stupid, anti-intellectual and dangerous.

I certainly do not believe that anyone who follows a religious worldview (forget “Judeo-Christian,” which is a nonsense term) is myopic, stupid, anti-intellectual or dangerous. But many of them certainly are at least some of those things. Ellis Washington, for example.

Although the term “secular humanist” wasn’t coined until the early 1850s, these people were philosophically the children that carried the anti-God ideas of the humanist Age of Enlightenment (1600-1800) into the 19th century. This anti-religious religion or evolution atheism staked its future by allying with any philosophy, demigod, leftist intellectual, newspaper editor, politician, judge or skeptic as long as they hated God, capitalism and Christianity.

People like Ellis Washington revel in these kinds of cartoonish caricatures of his opponents.

Like the Loyalists of the colonial period, secular humanists and today’s postmodernists all hated the historical fact that the colonists won the American Revolution (1775-83), thus characterizing America and American exceptionalism as illegitimate and oppressive.

Right. Like Thomas Paine, who was certainly one of the Enlightenment thinkers that Washington despises so much. More than anyone else, he was responsible for firing up the colonists to revolt against England. But no, he must have hated the historical fact that we won the American Revolution. After all, Ellis Washington says so. Same with Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, both major figures in Enlightenment thinking (and savaged as atheists by Ellis Washington’s ideological forebears.

And it just goes on and on like that. Nothing remotely coherent or tied to history.

Comments

For example, using the above quote the secular humanist (today’s Democrats) believes that God is a myth [thesis/problem] and that man created the gods [antithesis/reaction], therefore we [Democrats] are gods who can do whatever we please in the name of the common good – the U.S. Constitution, the Bible, the original intent of the framers, liberty, due process, morality be damned! [synthesis/solution]

But how can they be gods if gods are mythic? Doesn’t that just destroy his argument?

Oh, wait, he doesn’t care.

(As an aside, I don’t think he’s a stupid anti-intellectual because he’s a christian. I just think he’s a stupid anti-intellectual because he’s stupid. And very much against intellect.)

Washington believes he will live forever. I do not believe that I will.

Washington believes there is a cosmic, eternal purpose to his existence. I make no such claims about myself.

Washington believes he possesses an innate ability, called “faith”, that allows him to detect truth not only in the absence of evidence but in the face of countervailing evidence. I make no such claim, and must determine the truth of claims by reason and the examination of evidence.

Seriously, WTF is going on with these wingnuts and their German Idealism-bashing? “Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, evil”….

Never mind that they have never ever read Hegel (much less Fichte) nor begin to understand what the purpose of the dialectic is (an attempt to dissolve philosophical problems and do away with philosophical skepticism). I have never heard a fellow liberal or left-libertarian cite the dialectic for ANY reason, but HEY! Marx made use of it, and the liberals LOVE Marx, therefore the dialectic is evil.

It’s funny that Ellis Washington brought up narcissism, since I was just reading about it quite recently. But I don’t think he would like being under the microscope himself.

There is a fascinating essay by one Kim Messick on Salon, in which he describes some of the psychological background to the American far right, specifically its current Tea Party manifestation. He builds on Hofstadter’s observations of their paranoia, and points out how they conflate the nation with themselves.

Ellis Washington is a good example of the political paranoid.

…The political paranoid knows that the “circus masters” and their familiars aren’t simply after the “sticks of power”: they’re after him. He (or she) is the ultimate quarry of the long, intricate conspiracy that is American history.

How should we describe a political vision that refuses to distinguish self from nation and sees history as an elaborate plot against both? How can we capture its unique amalgam of grandiosity, rage and vulnerability? The only word that comes to mind here is another refugee from clinical psychology: “narcissistic.”
…
This is the message paranoid narcissism ceaselessly delivers to its devotees. “The Others are irreligious, unproductive, licentious, treacherous. You are the rock on which this nation was built and you are the foundation on which it will rise again. You. It’s all about you.”

michael kellymiecielica“‘Hegelian dialectical materialism’ Hegel was an idealist, an absolute idealist. it’s like he just strung three words together.”
You underestimate him. He strung together way more than that.

This notion that Secular Humanist = Democrats baffles me. In my neck of the woods, all political power in the Democratic party flows from the pulpits of the Black churches. I think we have the most bible-thumping, homophobic Democrats in the country.

As others have noted, as a reading of Hegel this is beyond ridiculous, well into the nonsensical. That bit about the thesis/antithesis/synthesis, for example – holy crap. He really is just stringing words together. Don’t they have editors at WND? Or are they just as ignorant? (I think I know the answer to that one …)

Seriously, go up to a real Hegel scholar like Robert Stern or Paul Redding (while they’re at lunch, say) and start talking about that notorious Hegelian Corliss Lamont and watch him shoot milk out his nose. It’ll be fun!